


it's the killers who inherit the earth

by apricots



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Meditation, Mostly Implied Barriss/Ahsoka, Order 66, Post-Series, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-22 11:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7436512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricots/pseuds/apricots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>All of this is the way it is, and there's nothing she can do to change it. Helplessness is freeing, in a way.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Post-series Barriss in prison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "survival of the fittest" by robert delong

Prison suits Barriss, in a strange way. She's alone all day, every day, left with just herself and her thoughts in an empty room. She doesn't mind being alone. The isolation is healing, in some ways. The dark side, the Order, the war, everything is so far away that she doesn't have to touch it if she doesn't want to.

It's like being grounded on Coruscant, if she looks at it in a certain light. Her room at the temple was mostly empty, too. She didn't have much of a view there, either. But, of course, the key difference there was that being grounded on Coruscant meant _waiting_ , and being in prison means simply _existing._ There is nothing to wait for, though she catches herself doing it anyway.

Here, she is able to practice a detachment that she never could out in the world. It's easy to look at things sensibly when they're all so far away. There is nothing to be attached to, nothing to fear, nothing to _do_. She must simply accept the nothingness, let it wash over and through her, and she must learn to exist without expectation or emotion. Feeling frustrated accomplishes nothing. Feeling upset accomplishes nothing.

All of this is the way it is, and there's nothing she can do to change it. Helplessness is freeing, in a way.

It's cold and quiet. Everything is impeccably clean, impeccably sharp: clinical, almost. Everything is smooth and new and in perfectly good repair. There will be no escaping, not from here. Not that there would be any point; to escape she would have to leave the cell, the block, the building, the compound, the city, the planet-- they would catch her and drag her back and put her someplace worse.

This is fine, she thinks. They don't do anything to her. They don't speak to her. She's fed plain flavorless rations once a day-- enough to keep her alive and healthy, but not satisfied. The clones that deliver her food wear their helmets and don't say a word. She greets them politely, every time she sees them, and sometimes they hesitate. Sometimes there's a moment where they seem tempted to respond, and she wonders if there's someone she knows under the helmet, but they never say anything. They've probably been told not to speak to her.

All in all, she's treated reasonably well. It's a far cry from some of the gruesome fates that would have awaited her were she anyone else, from anywhere else-- grimy miserable pits where you're left to starve to death, bloodsports, slavery. They could have executed her, even.

She wonders, often, why they didn't execute her. Every time she does, she imagines a different variation on the same scene.

Ahsoka. Always Ahsoka. Master Luminara wouldn't beg for her life. She wouldn't even ask politely. She would bow her head, allowing herself a brief moment of heavy sadness, and she would accept her loss and move on. An apprentice disgraced and expelled and arrested was as good as dead, anyway. What difference did it make if she was actually killed?

Ahsoka, though. She might have said something. When Barriss closes her eyes, she can easily conjure herself an image of Ahsoka bursting at the seams with frustration and betrayal. "You can't just _kill her!_ " she'd say, raising her voice, earning her raised eyebrows and disapprovingly clicked tongues, and Anakin would put his hand on her shoulder and firmly pull her back until she was behind him.

It's just a fantasy, though.

Ahsoka hates her too much for it to occur to her to advocate on her behalf.

The truth is heavy and uncomfortably immutable: she's not worth the hassle of an execution. She's not worth the custody battle with the Jedi, the bickering over funeral rites, the endless meetings. Does she get a real funeral? Would they bury her in an unmarked grave? Where? How would they kill her? Where? Publicly? Privately? The Republic has never executed a Jedi. They wouldn't have any procedure in place. They wouldn't know what measures to take, how to transport her, how to make sure she didn't fight them off and make a mess of it.

She would be setting precedent.

Not that she's much of a Jedi. An excommunicated Padawan. A terrorist. Something else. Not a Sith, even if they might try to tell people that's what she was. Not light any more, but not dark. Just... the dappled shadow of leaves covering the sun.

Still, she's enough of a Jedi for the Republic, even if she isn't enough of a Jedi for the Order.

Time doesn't exist for her any more. She could mark the days passing, but she chooses not to. There's not much point to it. Days aren't relevant any more. She meditates, and breathes in the cool metallic air, and she drifts.

When she meditates, she hovers silently above the floor and reaches as far as she can. Through the hallways, into the other cells, into the control room. For something to do, she practices listening in on the clone guards' conversations, steals snatches of news about the war.

The war will never end, she knows. It will drag and drag and drag, and when it finally ends it will start anew in another form. Endless. Vicious. Their conversations are proof of that-- an endless cycle of interrupted negotiations, broken ceasefires, protests, fighting.

Over time, she learns the clones' names, their presences, their habits. Each of them the same, but distinct nonetheless. Knockout, Volley, Scratch, Slipknot. They're close. Good friends. They're young and bored with their assignment. Knockout and Volley think she's creepy: Slipknot and Scratch think she's harmless. Slipknot is the one who sometimes nods when she thanks him for the food. Volley is the best pilot.

Slowly, she pushes farther and farther away from herself. It gets easy, when there's nothing else for her to do. She doesn't even sleep any more; she is in a deep enough meditative state that she doesn't need to. The Force frees her from the prison of her body. She learns the shapes and currents of the entire building. She memorizes the architecture of it, the seams of the access panels and the shapes of the windows. She slips into the walls and learns how it fits together. She studies every inch of it, the wires and ducts and switches. She brushes her fingertips over it all, breathes in coolant and steam and sparks, tastes metal in the back of her mouth.


	2. Chapter 2

She's hovering outside of herself, distant and formless, when pain seizes her. It is not a physical pain; it's not a pain that grounds her to her body, but one that rips her further away. Screams and blaster fire echo in the Force, distant at first but growing louder and clearer by the second.

Jedi. Dying.

She can feel confusion, shock, fear, brief flashes of betrayal, but more than that she feels the cold rot of death spreading like a ripple through the galaxy. The Force shudders at the abrupt loss. She can see lights going out in the thousands. The universe is darkening. Emptying.

Everything spins. The galaxy flashes before her eyes, a whirling storm of sensation and sound and color as she gets shot in the back over and over and over again. Death on a scale she has never felt before.

 _The clones,_ a cacophony of voices shout as one. Millions of voices crying out in terror, suddenly silenced. _The clones._

She tears herself away from the massacre, unable to bear the pain any longer, to find herself on the floor. Her lungs are burning. She gasps for breath, but it's difficult. Death is too tightly wound around her chest.

A coup. A victory for the Sith.

Knowing that she was right gives her no amount of pleasure. There's no satisfaction in it. Maybe later satisfaction will come, but right now she feels only staggering loss. The Order is dissolving all around her, shattering apart, and there's nothing she can do to stop it. Imprisonment means that she can only spectate; shame burns almost as much as the loss. She isn't strong enough to even witness their deaths. She can't honor the lost. It's too much. There are too many. She can't hold that much grief inside of her; it would tear her apart.

Yoda. Yaddle. Windu. Nu. Ti. Fisto. Koon. Billaba.

She can't even count the names and faces that she knows firsthand, and that countless number pales in comparison to the enormity of the loss. They're all gone.

Luminara. Obi-Wan. Anakin. Ahsoka.

Millions of voices. Millions of bodies, once moving and breathing and warm and alive, are now corpses. Millions of teachers, of warm smiles, of gentle hands. The light of the Order had been infected by the dark side, but they could have healed that infection. Now, the Order is gone. Even if there are survivors, there will be no Jedi Order.

Heavy footsteps approach in the hall outside her cell and stop on the other side of the door. There's a pause, a considering, then retreating footsteps. The clones will not kill her, then. She is spared. She isn't a Jedi, after all.

Barriss pushes herself up off the floor and settles onto her knees. The Force here is always tainted with the foul taste of the dark side, but right now it's worse than ever. Everything is so dramatically tipped out of balance. It would be best for her to stay present in her body and disengage as much as she can, but she also thinks it would be unforgivably avoidant.

She has to know.

She inhales, and exhales, and closes her eyes. This time, she is looking for something. She wants to know how this happened.

The temple is burning. She can taste the smoke in her mouth. Corpses litter the floor, thoughtlessly cast aside in the halls. There are faces she recognizes amongst them, but she does not dwell on them. She allows the Force to show her what it will, and tries to reserve her emotional reactions for later. She ought not to push, but she can't help the rising panicked thought repeating itself over and over again: _where is Ahsoka?_

There are younglings dead in the halls. They're so small. It was a bloodless massacre; the temple is scorched but clean. She sees a lightsaber coming alive, bright blue. She sees the sweep of a cloak. _Where is Ahsoka?_

Glowing yellow eyes in a drawn face, a clenched jaw. She knows the scar, knows that face, knows that burning presence in the Force.

Anakin Skywalker.

Of course. Who else could it have been?

She does not see or feel or hear Ahsoka.

In the coming days, she keeps trying, but she is forced to conclude that Ahsoka is dead. If Skywalker was on Coruscant, Ahsoka would have been, too. He must have killed her.

The loss hurts, the emptiness in the Force an unbearable ache, but it does not kill her. Anything which does not kill her can be borne, no matter how much it might feel impossible. This weight only feels too much to carry; in truth, she knows she can. She learns to adapt to this new empty galaxy, this Force tainted with grief and darkness. The universe itself seems to mourn; the death of the Jedi is woven into the fabric of it.


	3. Chapter 3

He moves through the Force like a creature half-submerged in water. The disturbance he causes announces his presence before his own presence does. The shadow he casts reveals his form before it appears.

Still, she's not quite prepared for the suffocating effect of the darkness. It fills the building. The Force seems to shudder at the abomination striding through the halls. She can taste smoke in the back of her throat. The fear that ripples out in his wake is just as stifling, just as disturbing; everyone who sees him is terrified.

Darth Vader stalks towards her cell with purpose, emotion screaming under his skin. She opens her eyes when the door hisses open, but she does not move otherwise. She stays suspended in the air, legs crossed, hands folded in her lap.

The harsh sound of his breathing is the loudest thing she's heard in-- she's not sure how long. Years, maybe.

"Master Skywalker," she says. "How nice of you to visit."

"Barriss Offee," he says. His voice is half a growl, distorted by his mask. He stalks around her, slowly, staring at her from behind the gleaming mask. A prickle of discomfort climbs her back as he moves out of view, but she lets it pass. "The Jedi Order has been destroyed."

"Yes, I know," she says.

He pauses, expectantly, but when she doesn't say anything he keeps moving, cloak curling around him like a shadow. "It must have pleased you to hear of it. The Order finally crushed under the weight of its failures. All that corruption, all that chaos, wiped from the galaxy in one fell swoop. Just like you wanted."

The suggestion that she might have been _pleased_ stings, but she lets the sting pass. If she lets any of the darkness surrounding him to stick to her, she will be inviting all of it, and she will drown. She keeps breathing steadily, present but not entirely so.

"It was inevitable," she says, because that's more true than any of her feelings about what happened.

He keeps circling her, movements more restrained and stiff than they were once. Anakin Skywalker is dead: this creature that's taken up residence in his corpse has little in common with him. There's only so much a thing can warp while still retaining its essence. This is a Skywalker with everything that made him who he was carved out.

She wonders what he looks like underneath the mask.

She wonders what she looks like.

"I was blind, back then. When you bombed the temple, I couldn't see the reason in it. I couldn't hear the truth in what you said. I only saw what they told me to see. But now I understand you," He stops in front of her. "We understand each other."

"Is that so."

"That's why I'm here. You don't have to stay in this prison. You've committed no crime, in the eyes of the Empire. It just wasn't the right time. The pieces weren't in place yet. My master's plan didn't have room for outside interference, so you had to be set aside," he says. "Now, I come to offer you an opportunity to put your skills to work."

He flicks his hand, and one of the clone troopers waiting outside the door (Knockout, she thinks, although his presence is so clogged with fear that it's difficult to say for sure) steps in. In his hands, there are two lightsabers: the two that once belonged to Asajj Ventress. The clone steps forward and holds them out to her as Vader continues: "I find myself in need of Inquisitors. There are still survivors of the Jedi Order scattered throughout the galaxy. The Empire wishes to find them."

"Why?"

"Even a small ember can start a forest fire, if it's left unattended," he says.

She feels an outraged speech bubbling up in her throat. _I would never join you. We have nothing alike._ You _are the evil of which I spoke. I wanted the Order to change, to reform, to root out the darkness and turn back to the light-- I didn't want a massacre. I didn't want this._

It lodges under her skin, that outrage, even as she tries to slowly breathe it away. This is what they thought of her then: this is what they still think of her now. A Sith. A monster. A murderous tyrant. They took that impression of her to their graves; that image of her can never be changed, can never be taken back.

The emotion unbalances her; she unfolds her legs and gently sets herself down onto the floor. With her feet flat on the floor, she is significantly shorter than Vader is. He looms over her.

Defiance calls to her. She feels the desire to fight back, to dig in her heels and stand tall, more than she has in a long time. If ever there was a time to take a stand, surely it's now, with Darth Vader standing right in front of her.

She gazes at the offered lightsabers. If she speaks her mind now, he will kill her. If she grabs the lightsabers and tries to fight him, he will kill her. The last time they fought, she lost; since then she can feel that he has grown more powerful and less merciful.

The realization of how perilously close she is to dying does not feel as urgent as she thought it might. It is not frightening. She doesn't fear dying; some part of her longs for it.

But she doesn't _need_ to die here. If she agrees to be an Inquisitor for him, she will be free. She will be able to move through the Republic-- the Empire-- without much trouble. If there are Jedi out there, as Vader says, she would be able to seek them out.

What she would do then, she doesn't know. She is a traitor, as far as anyone knows. Even those who never met her would at least have heard of Master Unduli's Padawan who went bad. She would be an agent of the Empire. If Vader doesn't kill her, there's a good chance that a Jedi would. If they didn't, what then? She would like to help them, somehow, but how? To what end?

She can't see that far ahead. The road is clouded. There's no way to know what lies ahead without moving forward. Until now, the only future she had was an empty endless stretch of confinement. Now, it is a branching path: the certainty of death or the haze of the Empire.

If she dies, she can never make amends for what she has done, for what she has been a part of. The Jedi are collectively responsible for the atrocities of the Clone Wars, and now there are hardly any of them left to take responsibility. As one of the few survivors, it's her duty to stay alive and bear that weight of responsibility as long as she can. She must do everything in her power to repair the damage that has been done. She has to heal the wounds she helped to gouge into the galaxy by fighting in the war.

She pulls her defiance into the deepest part of herself. She won't put it away, but she must put it aside for now. This is not the time.

Hesitantly, she reaches for the lightsabers. When she touches them, she feels a rush of heat pulse through her palms. Blood. Anger. Betrayal. Abandonment. Failure. It's blistering and sudden and alien; it does not belong to her, not entirely. They aren't hers, after all. They were made for Ventress, fitted to her palms and weighted to her preference and curved to suit her fighting style. Her own lightsaber is lost to her, now-- although now she's not sure even that would feel like her own any more. It was built for a healer girl, the delicate thing she was before the war started.

She grips the handles and activates both of the blades at once. The crystals feel strained, the energy harsh. These are weapons built to kill people and destroy things. They have no pretensions of peacekeeping. There's an honesty in them that appeals to her. Raw unvarnished emotion will do that; it's easy to connect with.

"They suit you," Vader says.

She deactivates the sabers and tucks them both into her belt. When she looks up at Vader's mask, she can see a warped reflection of herself in the gleam of the helmet. "I will join you," she says, and hopes more than she believes that the Force will guide her, eventually, back to the light.


	4. Chapter 4

Rumor has it there's a gaggle of little Jedi children living outside of town. Special children. The people living there are too quick to talk when they see the lightsabers at Barriss' belt. They like the kids. No one knows how many there are. The kids help around town, lifting heavy things and repairing rooftops and hunting the large fanged beasts that pick off the livestock on the farms.

The system was a part of the Republic, but a distant part. They're right on the edge of Republic control. The war came to the system, but it never touched the ground. This planet is sparsely populated, with the main point of interest being a trade outpost.

This town was built around the ruins of a long-abandoned Jedi temple. Rumors of strange Jedi children spread to the trade outpost and then trickled up to her; she stopped it there, she thinks, but she can't be sure.

Children, living in the caves a ways away from town, or so they say. No one goes to those caves, though; everyone gives her a different reason as to why. They're dangerous, they're haunted, they're infested with something nasty. Barriss feels something nudging at the edge of her awareness the whole time she's in town; the feeling grows as she walks through the plains towards the caves.

When she stands outside, the feeling hums in her bones. Kyber crystals, deep in the cave systems. The Republic must not have known; the Empire doesn't, either. They would have landed here if they knew, put clones in town to keep the crystals out of the hands of the Sith.

She steps into the cave and feels her presence echo in the crystals. They respond to her, glowing, humming, murmuring. The power of them makes her dizzy; she's thrown off-guard and off-balance, and she can't sense anyone. She can barely even locate herself amidst the burning flurry of energy. She staggers, and presses her hand against the cave wall.

The crystals do not want her here. The lightsabers she has at her waist are stained with death, the artificial red crystals full of years of accumulated darkness. The crystals do not call to her, like they did when she was a youngling looking for her crystal. They scream; they think she's here to hurt what they're protecting.

 _I'm not here to hurt anyone,_ she thinks. _I'm here to help._

She's not sure what she's here to do. She just knows that this is where she's supposed to be. She has to find them. She has to find them, and then she'll know what she's supposed to do. _I hope._

The pressure still feels too much, but she grits her teeth and presses forward, leaning on the wall. They're just children. If she can find them, so can someone else. At the very least, she has to help them move.

The caves are a winding labyrinth. She gets spit out into a wide cavern with a high ceiling; it's dark, with the only light coming from the crystals scattered along the distant walls. There's no sign of the children; of anyone, really. She can't feel anything but the crystals, which is making her feel heavy and sick and dizzy. The more she tries to reach out, the worse she feels.

When she's in the center of the room, a voice echoes off the walls of the cavern. A quiet voice, shocked and hesitant and baffled.

" _Barriss?_ Is that you?"

Nothing has startled her in years, but this makes her jump and turn sharply, breath stilled in her throat, a disbelieving smile creeping over her face. "Ahsoka."

Ahsoka is standing near an opening in the side of the cavern, illuminated by the white lightsaber in her hand. The pale light makes her look washed out, almost ghostly. She is taller now, all lean muscle, and her face is no longer quite so round and childlike. The years have worn her down, but she is _alive_. Barriss thought she was gone, but she isn't.

It has been so long since she has been anywhere near anything good, let alone anything good and familiar and comfortable. She has spent so long without the company of other Jedi, with only smothering darkness closing in around her on all sides, the soft warm glow of Ahsoka's presence feels healing. Even if it is buzzing with fear and anger and suspicion, it's not nearly as nauseating as the last few Jedi she's been around. The ones she's had to kill for the Empire.

Without thinking, Barriss takes a step towards her. Ahsoka's grip on her lightsaber shifts and her eyes narrow, so she stops.

Slowly, Barriss holds up her empty hands, palms out. "It's me," she says.

The lightsabers on her belt jerk up and away, pulled across the cavern into Ahsoka's hands. She doesn't need to look very closely to know whose they are. Ahsoka's nose wrinkles in disgust. "How did you get these?"

"Darth Vader gave them to me," she says. Ahsoka bares her teeth in a silent snarl, shifts into a fighting stance, ready to lunge for her. Barriss feels only a vague flutter of concern. It wouldn't be so bad to be cut down now, here, by Ahsoka. It might even bring Ahsoka some peace, and Barriss finds herself wanting that more than she's ever wanted anything else.

"You're with the Empire," Ahsoka hisses, and tosses the lightsabers aside so she has the use of both her hands.

Barriss would rather not die before she can explain herself. If Ahsoka wishes to kill her, that decision should be an informed one. Killing her without understanding the situation in its entirety would be regrettable. It would hurt Ahsoka more than it hurt Barriss, and she can't have that. She will not allow herself to hurt her again, even indirectly.

"No," she says. "I mean, technically I am, but I can explain. If you'll allow me to."

Ahsoka laughs, high-pitched and hysterical. "Why would I do that, after what you did? You're a _liar_ and a _murderer!_ "

The spark of defiance she's been keeping locked deep inside of her grows warmer the longer she's around Ahsoka. She's infectious that way. "The Clone Wars made all of us into liars and murderers," Barriss says, as evenly as she can.

In an instant, Ahsoka lets out a furious scream, activates her second lightsaber, and leaps at her. Barriss is only barely able to jerk Ventress' lightsabers into her hands in time to activate them and stop Ahsoka from cutting her in half; the four lightsaber blades hover dangerously close to her face as Ahsoka bears down on her, angrier and stronger than she is. The light blades grinding against each other make a desperately unpleasant sound. Barriss' arms tremble with the effort it takes to keep her guard up.

"You _framed me!_ " Ahsoka snarls. "You betrayed me and you betrayed the Order and now you're one of Vader's lackeys and you expect me to _listen to you?_ "

Barriss' knees almost buckle. Fueled by anger-- a swirl of anger and grief and betrayal-- Ahsoka's much much stronger than Barriss. "I understand you wanting to kill me, Ahsoka," she says through gritted teeth. This is what she was meant to do. The Force wanted her to find Ahsoka. It was its will that they find each other again. It's the will of the Force that Ahsoka be the one who decides whether she lives or dies. "But before you do, I think it's only right that you hear everything that I've done, so you can make the most informed decision."

At that, Ahsoka disengages. She jumps back like she's been stung, and Barriss' arms drop to her sides. She deactivates the lightsabers, even though it's dangerous; it'll make Ahsoka less on edge, she hopes.

Ahsoka looks at her like she's something incomprehensible and entirely foreign, and says, " _What?_ Is this some kind of trick?"

"No. It's just that... there is no one else left to give me a trial," Barriss says. "I never had one. I was guilty, but I was never brought to justice. It might not seem significant to you, but... it is to me. You can decide what to do with me once you've heard all the facts. I trust you to do what's right, and I'll accept whatever fate you decide for me."

She drops to her knees, head bowed, and carefully places Ventress' lightsabers on the ground in front of her. "Please, Ahsoka," she says. "I am not asking you to spare my life, only that your decision to end my life is an informed and level-headed one."

Ahsoka makes an achingly familiar sputtering flustered noise.

It's difficult to tell what's going on, with her senses overwhelmed by the power of the kyber crystals in the walls. She closes her eyes and concentrates, but it's still difficult to reach through the haze to find Ahsoka. She can't sense her emotions at all. For the first time in a long time, she is forced to sit with herself and only herself; she cannot drift away, cannot slide out of her identity, cannot feel anyone else's emotions. She is stuck with her own pulse pounding in her throat, her own muscles aching, her own hands shaking.

It's unnerving, being herself and only herself. She realizes, now, that she has been avoiding the reality of herself. She is _Barriss Offee,_ a specific being within the Force, not just some abstracted formless thing. The things she has done and the lives she has taken cling to her skin like a thin layer of dust.

The sound of Ahsoka deactivating her lightsabers cuts through the dizzying haze.

"I have a feeling I'm not going to like whatever it is you want to tell me," Ahsoka says. She sighs. "But hearing you out is what a Jedi is supposed to do. I mean, I'm not a Jedi any more, but that's because they stopped doing what Jedi were supposed to do, and I... wish someone had listened to me."

Barriss dares to glance up at Ahsoka through her eyelashes; her arms are crossed over her chest, her nose wrinkled in a dissatisfied sort of way. "I guess it would make me a big hypocrite if I refused to listen to you, huh?"

Relief washes away the anxiety she was pretending she wasn't feeling. She will not die with her corpse wrapped in lies. At least one person will know everything, and that's all that matters. She can die not necessarily absolved-- she's too smart to hope for that-- but fairly judged. This is her chance to apologize-- to Ahsoka specifically, and to everyone symbolically.

She does not want an _objective_ judge. Ahsoka stands in for everyone she has ever hurt; they are the ones with the right to judge her. Barriss trusts Ahsoka to balance emotion with morality. If anyone can speak and pass sentence on behalf of those she has caused harm to, it's Ahsoka. If Ahsoka kills her after hearing her out, her vengeance will be everyone's vengeance.

"Thank you," she says softly.

"Don't thank me," Ahsoka sits down on the ground in front of her, cross-legged and strangely casual. "Just say whatever it is you want to say, and I'll listen."

Barriss inhales shakily. In theory, this is easy. Now, in practice, she finds herself almost tongue-tied. She reminds herself that she has nothing to lose, and starts at the beginning.


End file.
